The Loneliness Files: A Memoir in Essays

“An essential exploration of the isolation inherent in our era of virtual hyperconnection [that] also asks how we can find our way back to one another.”—New York Times Book Review 

"I was blown away not only by the writing, but by the adventurous & expansive concept stretched out across these essays. The Loneliness Files has a real opportunity to reshape and redefine what a cohesive, braided, essay collection can be."— Hanif Abdurraqib, Tin House Editor-at-Large

What does it mean to be a body behind a screen, lost in the hustle of an online world? In our age of digital hyper-connection, Athena Dixon invites us to consider this question with depth, heart, & ferocity, investigating the gaps that technology cannot fill & confronting a lifetime of loneliness.

Living alone as a middle-aged woman without children or pets & working forty hours a week from home, more than three hundred fifty miles from her family & friends, Dixon begins watching mystery videos on YouTube, listening to true crime podcasts, & playing video game walk-throughs just to hear another human voice. She discovers the story of Joyce Carol Vincent, a woman who died alone, her body remaining in front of a glowing television set for three years before the world finally noticed. Searching for connection, Dixon plumbs the depths of communal loneliness, asking essential questions of herself & all of us: How have her past decisions left her so alone? Are we, as humans, linked by a shared loneliness? How do we see the world and our place in it? And finally, how do we find our way back to each other?

Searing & searching, The Loneliness Files is a groundbreaking memoir in essays that ultimately brings us together in its piercing, revelatory examination of how & why it is that we break apart.

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Athena Dixon is a poet, essayist, & editor. Her work is included in the anthology The BreakBeat Poets Vol.2: Black Girl Magic…